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Monthly Archives: April 2011

I moved to Waterloo, Canada a few years ago from Boston. I recall hearing that there were 2000 open tech jobs in Waterloo then. And though I don’t know where those jobs are, the situation never seems to change.

Waterloo Region firms need people to fill more than 2,000 positions – jobs at Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), maker of the world-famous Blackberry, make up almost half that demand. Canada’s most famous tech startup and tech giant has deep roots in Waterloo Region, already employing in excess of 3,000 tech workers here.

When we think BlackBerry, we think of Research In Motion Ltd. making billions, with thousands of employees. But in Canada’s Technology Triangle of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, 2,000 high-paying, hi-tech jobs are going begging.

Some of Canada’s hottest tech companies will head to the nation’s capital to look for talent when Communitech, the organization representing 700 tech companies in Waterloo Region, holds a ‘Get a Life in Waterloo Region’ recruitment effort there on April 21. Waterloo Region companies continue to hire at a rapid pace, and the recruitment event will profile some of the outstanding 2,000 current tech job openings available in the Region.

Good talent is hard to find and Research in Motion (RIM) along with other Waterloo tech powerhouses are hitting the road in search of their next round of hires. The companies will participate in Communitech-sponsored recruiting events in Montreal on March 21st and Ottawa on March 22nd. Communitech represents more than 700 tech company members in Waterloo Region which currently has some 2,000 tech job openings.

Why LRT? Not for transportation. It will be slower than buses. No, it is to revitalize the uptown, in which every previous attempt has failed. And to raise property value, so that more tax can be collected. Buses apparently won’t do that. Of course this is all just a gamble.

Light Rail Transit if merely the flavour of the week – just like roundabouts, nodes and corridors, and road diets. All ideas are new and hot for urban planners to try, and then discard when they fail. No problem at all, except for the massive waste of taxpayer dollars.
Kevin Libin at the National Post demonstrates some of the folly of Light Rail Transit using the oft-touted Calgary LRT. We are frequently told that LRT will eliminate the cost of building roads:

Furthermore, despite the dreams of transit planners, the system hasn’t actually gotten people to give up their cars: more people still drive downtown in Calgary than in any other Canadian city. And most transit riders, as everyone who lives here knows, simply drive to and park for free at the LRT stations and then ride the train downtown, rather than pay the $22 median “early bird” daily parking rates in the central business district. The LRT certainly hasn’t saved Calgary the pain of road building costs: the city spends the most in Canada per capita laying asphalt, 25% more than its closest rival, Edmonton, the study reveals.

And we’re told that LRT if far preferable to more flexible Bus Rapid Transit:

Bus Rapid Transit is essentially industry jargon for express buses, but has fallen out of favour with municipal politicians. The reasons, Lafleur believes, is because higher levels of government often pick up the bill for train infrastructure, letting municipal politicians “trade off higher capital costs for lower operating costs, even if the total cost is higher” and because cities often overlook, as Calgary has, the hidden costs of light rail. I think it’s just because mayors like choo-choo trains — or at least, as Lafleur points out, so many are intoxicated by visions of urban-hip “transit oriented development” built around LRT stations. These trendy communities result in higher property values, which work out nicely for city tax departments and high-income workers (the ones lucky enough to have parking spots provided for them downtown), but not so well for low-income workers, who are the ones most likely to benefit directly from transit.

It is fairly evident at this point that all information promoting the LRT is so biased as to be completely unusable in making a serious decision about transit options in Waterloo. Is it that difficult for Regional staff and politicians to actually speak honestly about transit?

However, my favorite line is that one that we need the LRT to attract skilled workers. How did we manage to attract the skilled workers that already live here without the LRT?